Apech

I am challenging the idea 'just concepts' for a start. What I have been trying to say is that the 'beyond concept' coheres all mutually defining concepts around it in a state of indestructibility, like the facets of a diamond.

We have been urged in various ways to regard concepts as abstract and immaterial (in the sense of having no effect). But this is not so. As I said above the realisation is beyond concepts - ineffable and so on - but the effect of this is to cohere conceptual essences.

That is all valid of course but it's not really what I was trying to say. I'm saying that 'the work' - the subtle body work involves concepts which are the way in which energy coheres or forms a body. A light body if you like. We (collectively all of us) have been sold a 'beyond concept' model which tends to make us denigrate concepts as something to be discarded once the true nature has been realised. Of course the correct point that the true nature is not something you can think into being or imagine in the ordinary sense still stands.

that to me is more a metaphor for the path or method - a raft to cross the river - not of concepts as such.

huh?

Hi @Robin, Not that it matters but it was Milarepa who showed his arse to Gampopa. I practice Mahamudra which is similar to Dzogchen (and Lamdre of the Sakya sect) - and there is a kind of paradox between 'already there' and the need to progress. There is a structure to progress, for instance the ngondro practices and so on. There is also a kind of hierarchy for practice from sutrayana, mahayana, vajrayana and dzogchen/mahamudra. At each level the attitude to obstructions is different - say from something to be removed, something to be overcome with positive emotions, something to be transformed - to something to be seen as being empty anyway. The stages don't negate each other. It's a bit like a telescope where the different sections slide together - when extended they seem different but when slid together they are actually the same. (Hope this makes sense - I just made up that analogy ). Mostly the emphasis is on purifying to see, as if your being is a lens through which the nature of things is seen. For instance in Guru Yoga (one the stages of the ngondro) you pray to remove self clinging in order to see the 'unborn' nature of mind, to loose any worldly wants and desires to see how your illusions about reality collapse and to remove all doubt in order to realise the Dharmakaya (true nature of reality). So the idea is that your confusion obstructs you seeing things as they really are and the task is to do something about that. I would discount anything to do with the FWBO. Aspiration is key and much more than a general wish. It is more like a will towards something e.g. Buddhahood. It is different to grasping or wanting. But generally you work with bodhicitta aspirationally until the absolute version begins to dawn. If you have a chronic illness then I would say that you should not tax your system too highly. You may try different therapies and wotnot of course but in terms of meditation it would be best to rely on deep but gentle shamatha (which I assume you have learned) - in the certain knowledge that your body and the wisdom inherent in your mind knows how to right itself given time. Apart from anything else this will teach patience (!).

Very sorry to hear this - I always liked Starjumper. Outspoken but honest in a no b/s kind of a way. I'll miss him. RIP.

https://tsoknyirinpoche.org/teachings/loving-kindness-and-compassion-in-the-dzogchen-tradition/ There's a saying in LoJong (mind training) that you should 'see confusion (delusion) as the four kayas'. The kayas are the 'bodies' or possibly levels of buddhahood. Seeing the subtle body as the sambhoga-kaya is part of this. We often speak of the subtle body as winds and channels (tsa-lung) or nadis and prana but there are also 'essences' called tigle in Tibetan and bindi (seeds) in Sanskrit. There are chiefly red and white tigle which focus around the navel and the crown respectively. As in the quote above the subtle body work is all about good circulation - and the mind 'rides on these energies'. How well and happy you feel depends on this. Emotion is also about this ... the e-motion. It is interesting to recognise that this subtle body is continually active, in fact sambhoga-kaya means something like the body of total enjoyment. Like the joy of being which purified and released emotion, non-stagnant emotion is experienced as. When I say 'experienced' - it is not outer more inner - so perhaps inperienced. I think it's quite accepted by us on DBs that there are channels and there is qi moving through them. But we have very little talk of essences, tigle, drops or seeds within that stream, what they mean and how we can work with them. Any thoughts?

A rhyme's A crime In someone's book. And yet you yearn The page to turn And take a little look.

... and you won't even let me compose an elegy to him.

Allow your confusion to guide you, embrace it, surrender to life in all its mystery.

lynx in the desert the perfect deodorant for sweaty places.

in lost carcosa the yellow king's long lost tomb echos with dead songs.

It's just that I had visions of crockery being thrown, screams of regrettable language and arms being waved alarmingly in your direction. And you, in order to placate the situation saying calmly - 'honey, your emotions are just flows of energy.' Might work. Don't think I'll try it.

Invisible (may I call you that?), You come across as a little preachy and quite cross in this post. Are you a qualified Buddhist teacher? There isn't an orthodoxy here at DaoBums I'm afraid. We are all free to post our thoughts on here - which is why it is enjoyable and not sterile like so many forums. I suggest you go with the flow a little.

Is this really your position @steve ? Does your family find you a little ... unworldly? I suppose yes, at some level everything is a flow of energy - whatever that means. But there is still, if there is energy, movement. And in this case there is movement to construct (lit. heap or put together) or destruct (tear apart). It is the movement of the world. And many major emotions are destructive aren't they? Anger, hate, jealousy ... anything violent - which we know karmically regenerates its own nature into future situations. The world turns on this stuff whether I like it or identify with it or not. Or does it? Aha! What is this self which identifies with emotions or doesn't? What is it exactly? Because the ego, normally speaking is just a heap of emotionally charged memories - is it that which is doing the identifying? I don't think so. And when we have reduced our identification with these emotions - what are we like? Do we have feelings and passions? Do we have love or faith? Are we kind or cruel? Or are we intelligences without these things? Hmmmm.

I don't know as I associate 'perception' mostly with seeing and there were no visual images and so on, except the normal world. An absence what you might call private volitional thoughts or actions, more like a sense of completion, where the need to act from a private intention ceases. Maybe. Hard to express properly. I think it is simply that the immediate brilliance of awareness is noticed and unobscured. I would say this 'one pointedness' is key - but it does not mean that you focus on one 'thing' - although that might be an exercise - but that your mind is unified and this is something to do with the heart (not so much the head) but ultimately all of you of course. Sitting with still focus and letting go into that immediate here-now presence is what it is about. Thank you for your reply

Ok well. I belong to a tradition which discourages to the point of banning talk of personal experiences. But I guess I'll have to breach this a little. The 'non-dual' is something which I know annoys some on here, mentioning no names (Bindi) but I see that as an objection to the loose talk bull shit which floats around internet circles and encourages disassociation with 'self' and so on – and the mis-use of emptiness as a concept. My experiences of non duality were characterised by certain feelings and sensations(probably not the right word but bear with me). A feeling of inner unity which focusses in the heart, immense clarity as if one's eyes had opened for the first time, the loss of any gap between the perceiver and the perceived, a flood of 'light' – although not physical light but super awareness and a joy which could be called love. Love without an object of love and unconditioned. Is love an 'emotion' as such? Well maybe or maybe not. Certainly compared to other emotions it is different because it is complete. By this I mean that anger, jealousy, greed, lust … etc. are all operative because they are incomplete. They are all raging against something or desiring what they do not have. They are like water serpents moving through the waters with open mouths. While they are actively in predominance then the non-dual love becomes unavailable to the mind which is dealing with emotions. Not to say it doesn't exist in some sense it is simply unlocatable. As mind and in particular the alaya storehouse has existed since beginningless time we each carry with us a vast (infinite?) store of encoded experiences – and like skins of an onion have built on them the more ancient strata, our own personal charged experiences. These shape our thoughts and feelings and how we perceive the world. From the beginning of our work we have the task of dealing with this burden which we carry. Sometimes the recorded emotional charges are so strong they threaten the very nature of self and lead to mental breakdown, very often they attack our self esteem and try to rob of us will. Because of the need to survive, mostly, these things are buried in order to deal with the present. But sooner or later, especially for those of us that have taken up the task of cultivation they have to be addressed. Because the totality of experience is so vast it would take eternity to unpick it bit by bit. In fact the over facing nature of this task causes many to refute it altogether. To bypass it. They come face to face with it and just turn away. Or say that the path simply does not lie in that direction. Which is ok if you need a rest. But sooner or later you will have to return to deal with the difficult pain – or at least deal with it enough to gain wisdom. The wisdom of knowing what it is, how it affects us, it's influence on our subtle body and mind and so on. That's why I suggest that emotions are the path. What calls us on through the painful path is the unique and unconditioned love which 'exists' in our very nature. For the religious call it the love of God. Otherwise Buddha-nature, which is the beginning of our calling, the path we walk and the place at which we eventually arrive. If our work is successful a new self, built of subtle energies – a jewel in a lotus – coheres around this eternal love and wisdom, as an indestructible being. These are just my thoughts and if there is error in here, please accept my apologies.

Luke when one is as charismatic and handsome as you and me it is almost inevitable.

I don't wish to intrude here but quite often the philosophy is fine (as a philosophy) but the teachers and practitioners are not. So I would say do not judge say Buddhist philosophy by its teachers. They are regularly getting into hot water over something. Quite often its sex which is their downfall. I would also argue, whilst affirming that emotion is the path (since I started this thread anyway it would be churlish not to) - I don't think Bodhicitta is an emotion as such. I could say more but then I would have cause to mention non-duality

By wrong I mean a confused or ignorant view of what is happening (and why). I don't mean morally wrong. I mean simply that you don't understand your circumstances or what is happening. Mahamudra is a high level thing. Emotional equilibrium or perhaps basic sanity is something we need to establish on the way.

I see it more like this - but bear in mind I am not a very orthodox Buddhist - is that based on the derivation of the word for 'suffering' that is 'dukkha', which meant originally a defective axel of a wheel. (It's from Vedic sources and cart and chariots were very important to them). So, say you are riding a bike with a wobbly wheel, you aren't going to get a smooth ride - you'll be thrown around and bounced up and down. The natural tendency for most of us is to cling on tighter and tighter as the ride gets worse. You try to save yourself by holding on as hard as you can. But the net effect of this is to make the shaking even worse. However, the right strategy is like a professional rider is to keep a looser flexible grip, to ride the bumps, come up in the saddle, go with the bumps. In this sense clinging makes us suffer. Applied to life, you could say the world is out of kilter, bad things happen, it has a kind of inherent instability and tendency to chaos, natural disasters and so on. Although being strictly accurate this is the samsaric world which is being referred to. Our clinging on and hoping for a status quo or a safe space make the ride worse. Beyond this there is another question as to whether what we experience as happening is really happening, or are we just seeing it wrong. But that's really another stage. I think the idea of allowing as you put it is key.

Heck! Just to make some comments on the last three or four posts without making specific replies. Western Buddhism especially that which aligns itself to scientific enquiry (psychology and neuroscience) should in my opinion be either entirely dismissed or just subsumed under the sciences involved and loose the name of Dharma entirely. Shockingly many prominent Buddhists promote this kind of thing either in the case of say the DL because he is clueless as to the nature of science, or alternatively in the case of secular Buddhists because they are not Buddhists at all. Clinical psychology and psychotherapy can be helpful is intelligently applied to people in distress but 99% of it is geared to making the subject person 'well adjusted'. That is able to fit back into consensual 'reality' post trauma. Buddha's first noble truth - there is suffering or existence is suffering - is actually key. Through this he was advising his audience, those who attended his first teaching to notice that suffering was existing as the point of focus. In other words don't turn away or distract yourself with diversionary tactics such as wish-fulfillment, escapism, pretence, bypassing or anything else. He was saying emotion is there, look at it, accept it is there. And from there - work with it - 'emotion is the path'. Reason is not the path. Reason is cold and mostly is a form of coping mechanism - which is why if you take a strictly rational man and scratch the surface - he will scratch back because he is defending an island of peace and purity which he has built within himself using concepts which reassure his own peace of mind. Attachment or perhaps attraction and aversion are key I think. Because we are shaped by them - especially on a subtle body level because the energy involved has a positive / negative component. It is like a perfect recording mechanism which replays stored experience - which has been captured according to emotional stress, charged and active even though often buried deep within. What it is we are to do with all this stuff is the question. Non-attachment is not the final answer but merely a mental 'trick' to move the memories out of a fixed position and give a chance at some release. PS. The mahayana was not a 'reformation'

“The statue is dated to the roman imperial era, around 100 CE or so. At the same site, inscriptions in both Greek and Sanskrit were found. Recently, a statue of the Buddha was unearthed in Egypt. It's not uncommon to find buddhist artifacts in europe and the med, but what's remarkable here is that this statue was crafted by local Egyptian craftsmen using local Mediterranean stone.” Heliotroph @Heliotrophy on Twitter

This is very true, although the Tibetans always emphasise the Indian origin (not sure but there might be something political about this) but there are even tankas and so on with the trigrams of the I Ching on them. I just read a 'biography' of the great Maitripa - https://www.amazon.com/Maitripa-Indias-Nondual-Bliss-Masters/dp/1611806704/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VXY6SDY2Z62Q&keywords=Maitripa+mathes&qid=1682791971&sprefix=maitripa+mathes%2Caps%2C423&sr=8-1 if you are interested and it goes into detail about the different 'seals' or mudras. The book is a masterful piece of scholarship (IMO). Salutations to all the lone mystics ... you are not alone! ... well you are but you know what I mean